7.11.13

IEEE statement on appropriate use of bibliometric indicators

Recently, citation counts and proxies thereof have risen in importance as fundamental elements in the determination of the scientific impact of entire departments or universities and research centers [8], funding evaluations of research proposals and the assessment of individual scientists for tenure and promotion [9], salary raises [10], or even to predict future career success [11]. While the first use is technically appropriate, provided it relies on data collected from a sufficiently large set to provide a statistically meaningful analysis, this condition is never satisfied when applied to individual scientists.